VOORHEES, N.J. -- Having managed an early skate just to reacquaint himself with the ice Wednesday, Danny Briere had a spring in his heart if not in his step.

"It smells like playoffs," Briere said of the upbeat vibe in the building, or maybe predicting when he could next play hockey.

Aside from that verbal shot of warmth, however, the news on Briere didn't seem much better. He says he's still suffering symptoms from the concussion caused by a fall into the boards during a practice March 23, but he doesn't know when he will next sniff a game.

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Briere said he'd tried to start a real rehabilitation since he bumped his head, but "had a couple of setbacks." He was hoping to avoid another one after this skate, but remains out indefinitely.

"You get to the point where you feel OK, and so you push it a little bit more every day," Briere said. "And if that's fine, you push a little bit more."

You get the idea that he won't have any problem pushing hard if the Flyers go on some kind of April dash despite their long playoff odds. But what's not so clear about Briere's status is what will become of him after the season. He's likely on a Flyers farewell tour right now, and it's possible goalie Ilya Bryzgalov is going to take a bow with him if the Flyers decide to eat a ton of cash to say goodbye.

For clarity, look at Paul Holmgren's actions at the trade deadline Wednesday. From the looks of things, he traded one backup goalie for another, and picked up a journeyman forward off the waiver wire. But you could also see Holmgren's acquisition of goalie Steve Mason as a precursor to an offseason rebuild.

You can especially see that when you see how the Flyers can't possibly go into another season with a team lacking so much and so strapped by a couple of contracts, those of Briere and Bryzgalov.

Briere is an obvious candidate for a compliance buyout under the so-called "amnesty clause included in the collective bargaining agreement that was painfully hashed out in January. His cap hit is $6.5 million for each of the next two years, though his actual salary is only a total of $5 million for those two years.

If the Flyers included him as one of the two amnesties they're allowed to exercise over the next two offseasons, all of Briere's money would come off the cap and the Flyers would only have to pay him two-thirds of the remaining salary on his contract ($3.3 million), then give him a grateful handshake and send him on his way.

It's possible that Briere's concussion complicated matters, since teams are not allowed to use the compliance buyout on injured players. The Flyers would not be able to use the amnesty clause on him until he got cleared by a doctor. Whether that means a team doctor or Briere's personal choice isn't something clear in a CBA apparently still being printed into nice little books in the NHL offices.

Either way, the Flyers likely will be able to move Briere in that fashion, which will get $6.5 million off the cap books for next season. That done, a decision will have to be made: Can Steve Mason become this team's starting goalie?

If so, the Flyers would be able to erase another $5.6 million off their cap next year and six years after that by calling an amnesty on Bryzgalov. But that will truly come at a cost, since, let's see ... Bryzgalov has $35.5 million in salary left on his deal.

How's a nice $23.3 million severance check sound, Bryz?

"We like Steve as a young goalie," Holmgren said of his new backup goalie, a guy just four years removed from winning a Calder Trophy as the league's top rookie. "I still think there's tremendous upside there."

It seems a stretch to think the Flyers have the time to determine that Mason will be a No. 1, that they can find another competent backup goalie and that they can eat that much cash just to send Bryzgalov and his cap hit on their way. But this is a team that needs half of an overhaul at the blue line, and that can only come with cap room to spare.